The occupation forces arrested, on Sunday (8-4), an American solidarity activist of Palestinian origin, in her twenties, and assaulted her and her colleagues; a young Italian and a British woman aged thirty years, which resulted in injuries and scratches.
According to Mohammed Alghebrena, an activist in the Committee for the Defense of Al-Khalil, the occupation forces have been forcing shopkeepers on Beersheba road (in the center of Al-Khalil) to close their shops, and ordering Palestinian passers-by to empty the street to enable settlers to arrive to an archaeological site in that street they call "the tomb of Otni'el Ben Kenaz " where they attacked the solidarity activists.
The coordinator of the "International Solidarity Movement" Sami Natsheh explained that the three activists are members of the Movement and that they were interested in documenting and exposing the abuses of Zionist occupation authorities in the city which has apparently provoked the soldiers and pushed them to assault the activists without justification.
Occupation forces were deployed in large numbers between that area and the northern entrance of Shuhada Street and closed the access road between them (about one kilometer) to enable the settlers to move freely in the occupied area of Al-Khalil. This provoked the citizens to throw stones at soldiers, to which the soldiers responded by chasing the Palestinian youth and firing stun grenades at them.
